Fravel on Trial, Day 17: Madeline Kingsbury’s new boyfriend and parents testify in court
(ABC 6 News) — The Adam Fravel murder trial continued on Tuesday with testimonies from Madeline Kingsbury’s boyfriend and her parents.
Fravel is charged with the murder of the mother of his two children after she disappeared last spring.
In the few months before Kingsbury disappeared, she had broken up with Fravel and began dating his old fraternity brother, Spencer Sullivan.
On Tuesday afternoon, the jury heard from Sullivan, one of the last people to see the mother of two.
Kingsbury and Sullivan had just begun their sexual relationship a few months before she disappeared, and one day before, Kingsbury spent the afternoon at his home.
However, on March 31, the two never spoke until a friend of Kingsbury called and asked if Sullivan had heard from her.
The state has already proven Sullivan’s movements that day with an airtight alibi, but the defense still grilled the veteran. The defense pressed him on whether he saw any bruising on Kingsbury in her last year of life, and he replied that he had not.
The same cannot be said for Kingsbury’s stepmother who testified that one chilling incident left Kingsbury with a mark that she could not ignore.
Both of Kingsbury’s parents recalled a chilling incident from 2021 after Kingsbury called them crying and claiming that Fravel had pushed her down and choked her in front of their children saying “I can make you disappear like Gabby Petito.”
Petito was missing for days before the 22-year-old’s body was found strangled by her fiancé that same year.
Afterwards, Kingsbury’s biological mother, Krista Hultgren, testified that she saw a red mark on Kingsbury’s neck. Her father, David, told the courtroom that he hasn’t even spoken to Fravel since 2020 after kicking him out of his house for being narcistic and selfish.
Hultgren also told the jury she had accepted Fravel into the family and even loved him.
Hultgren also testified about Kingsbury’s final days, and on March 30, the day before she went missing, Kingsbury had called her mother in tears saying Fravel was following her around the house, always looming, and made her so uncomfortable she had to leave.
ABC 6 News will be in Mankato for the duration of the trial, and full coverage can be found here.